Apple CarPlay makes its move to motorbikes and the 2018 Honda Gold Wing

Apple CarPlay has been around for a few years now, with it being designed to give you a user-friendly and safe iPhone experience in the car. As it's name suggests, it's designed exclusively for cars, or at least it was until now.

Honda has announced the 2018 Gold Wing motorcyle at an event in Santa Barbara, California, and it's become the very first bike to feature Apple CarPlay technology.

Using CarPlay with the Gold Wing won't be as easy as using it in a car, based purely on how it's set up, but Honda has done its best to make it as intuitive as possible. The bike does have a 7-inch colour TFT display, which certainly helps and your iPhone is plugged in either in the trunk or in a storage compartment in the gas tank. No little cubby hole by the gearstick here.

Road Show

You also need to connect a Bluetooth headset to be able to use the CarPlay features. Controls for CarPlay can be found on the left handlebar, in a four-way configuration or in the form of a rotary dial on the gas tank in front of the rider.

The overall CarPlay experience is the same as you get on four-wheels, so you can view and reply to messages, bring up maps for navigation or access music for tunes while on the move.